[Robotgroup] Eggggselent Dry Material Plotters for Art and Architecture.

[brooksdesign]

Yes I do a lot of CAD these days and I have a lot of experience with architectual drafting and manufacturing of mostly Roman styled elements. I like your biz plan as well. I'm planning on building several gazeeboes this summer for a "if you like it, buy it, if you don't, someone else will" kind of biz as I got tired of customers changing plans in the middle of projects.
-brooks

-----Original Message-----
>From: Bruce Waters <biwaters at austin.rr.com>
>Sent: Feb 7, 2008 3:31 PM
>To: robotgroup at puremagic.com
>Subject: [Robotgroup] Eggggselent Dry Material Plotters for Art and	Architecture.
>
>brooks
>Eggggselent  back at you !    I am weak in the mechanicals
>and I am extremely concerned about the abrasive nature
>of these materials in a mechanical environment.  Therefore,
>I am very pleased that you have the inclination to deal with
>pneumatics and other alternatives for accurate placement
>of dry material.   I bet you also have good mechanical CAD
>experience which was going to be somewhat of a learning 
>curve for me.
>
>I have no nozzles that work very well yet.  I have run an
>experiment using thin polycarbonate (fluorescent light tube
>protector) cylinders.   I used two concentric cylinders to
>form a cement cylinder embedded in plain sand.   I used
>the polycarbonate as forms and manually withdrew the
>form from a bucket of sand as I added dry cement mix
>between the forms and plain sand inside the inner form
>and outside the outer form.   I had plastic straw segments
>between the forms at the top to maintain the spacing 
>between forms.   
> 
>The point was to see if the cement would "bloom" into the
>surrounding sand.   It did not to any measurable extent.
>Therefore, I concluded from this experiment that I could
>expect less (and probably much less) than 1/8" 
>dimensional variation from cement migration during 
>wetting and cure.
>
>There will be other dimensional precision detractors such
>as slightly inaccurate deposition of the dry material and 
>subsequent squirm from wheel pressures and weight
>compression on successively deposited layers.  
>Nevertheless,  I am greatly encouraged by the 
>small amount of error from moisture migration of the 
>Portland cement ingredients as indicated by my 
>experiment.
>
>The end product of my experiment was a four centimeter
>diameter cement pipe with 5mm walls with less than 1mm
>variation in thickness.  I was using a finer largest size
>particle sand than normal mortar sand.   I was not able
>to detect any variation due to bloom greater than my
>largest sand particle.   The pipe does have ridges along
>its length because I could not withdraw the form smoothly
>from the sand as I added material but there are lengths
>along the pipe which came out smooth and these are
>wonderfully uniform for the small dimensions involved.
>
>I look forward to collaborating with you on upcoming
>phases of development of the dry material plotters.
>On a kind of earn-as-you-go concept, I was hoping
>to move forward selling some of the products of these
>plotterbots to finance following phases of development.
>I had planned to proceed with intermediate, artsy 
>flavors of the plotterbots which would produce
>Navajo/Tibetan/... style sand art pictures,  then 
>birdbaths and garden statuary, then small scale 
>models of classical architectural things like the 
>Pantheon, then boats of increasing sizes, then 
>gazebos, prior to full scale residential construction 
>with all its building codes, etc.  These are very 
>flexible plans since there is nothing yet "cast in 
>concrete" or is that "plot in concrete?" ;)
>
>I also have ideas about ultra high precision plotterbots
>which could provide superfine color detail for friezes 
>and other art and architectural purposes.   I have hopes
>that these may work on selected parts of the larger
>items to allow a mingling of art and architecture.
>
>One easy mingling might be reproductions of and 
>variations on various Roman ceramic tile mosaics with 
>at least one plotterbot equipped with pick and place 
>capability.  It strikes me that some wealthy individuals 
>might like a Roman style mosaic with their own or their 
>consort's likeness pixelated under an olive branch 
>tiara.  Our techniques could produce these on curved
>or even multiply curved surfaces with far less human
>labor than the Romans had to use for flat ones.
>Ours could also use any scale tile  from 
>Nanoceramics to Teraceramics (tm ?).   Since
>she already displays evidence of activity in ceramic
>mosaics and demonstrable talent in graphic art, 
>maybe our cat herder would like to experiment 
>with  mini ceramic tiles for "the Roman Motif"
>prototype  purposes ?  Perhaps someone can
>parody-morph a Roman mosaic face into a well 
>known contemporary (perhaps political) personality 
>for a Franklin Furnace grant in this election year.
>Et two Clintons.   Beware Obama, he hath that
>lean and hongry look.   Hail Ron Paul, hail yes.
>McCain while you're still McAble Macbeth..  
>Romney us and Reemney us.   To Huckster be 
>or not to Huckster be, that is the question.   
>Oval Office Rerun: Slick Willy Fiddled While 
>Rodham Burned.
>
>The plotterbots might also be slightly adapted to 
>produce custom ceramics for specific mosaics.  
>A dry plotterbot process could likely also work 
>well for on-demand, moldless custom ceramic 
>production besides for ferrocement.  Plotterbots 
>could certainly simulate (in matt, pastel colors) 
>custom ceramic mosaics for the proletariat using 
>ferrocement.
>
>Bruce Waters
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